Bangladesh: female garment workers acquire leadership skills

Eighty-five percent of Bangladesh's workforce in garment factories is female. Yet, few are supervisors or know about their rights as workers and women. In addition, there is a lack of women in leadership positions at trade unions, making it even more difficult for women to bargain for their rights at work. In view of frequent harassment by male supervisors, particularly against union members, training is needed for those women about their rights and roles and to groom them for leadership positions.

Together with the UK's Trades Union Congress TUC Aid programme, Bangladesh's National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), an affiliate of global union IndustriALL, started training sessions for female union members in December 2014 to educate future women trade union leaders. The first stage of the training programme has been successfully completed with over 500 female garment workers participating. They received training in employment rights and organising skills as well as health and safety issues, pay and working conditions and basic rights under the new labour law, especially relating to gender equality and discrimination. Very important was also a discussion of the position of women workers in the family.

A year after the programme start, Danish federation 3 F evaluated the training and found that participants were now more confident to take an active role in their unions and to tackle gender discrimination through collective bargaining. According to TUC, 20 participants have since been elected to the leadership of local unions. As a result of the positive outcome, there will be a further set of training for female garment workers.

The second stage of the training programme will be launched in the spring of 2016. It will entail more advanced training for women unionists to develop their negotiating skills, especially in areas such as physical harassment, low pay and poor health and safety conditions, as well as education about new labour regulations in Bangladesh. Apart from building the women's confidence when bargaining with the management, an important part of the training is also conflict prevention so that small problems do not escalate and lead to physical harassment.

Among the major challenges that remain is tackling very low union density in Bangladesh's garment sector – only 1.6 percent according to the ILO​. In addition, local labour laws require 30 percent of factory workers to be union members for legal recognition to be granted, which means effective organising at factory level is key.​

NGWF is one of the largest trade union federations in Bangladesh's garment sector with a total membership of more than 48,000 workers in 42 registered factory unions and 1,221 factory committees. Of those, more than 27,600 are female (57 percent) as are 17 out of 30 central executive members, including the vice president, secretary and treasurer. NGWF has also been one of the key unions helping to develop and coordinate the implementation of the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety.

Overall, the garment sector in Bangladesh employs more than 3.5 million workers in over 4,800 garment factories, producing ready-made garments for the global market, in particular for Europe and North America.

Image: participants of the day-long training / TUC